Two titans of dance gone within a month. First Pina Bausch, and now Merce Cunningham at the age of 90. The effect of their deaths paralleled the nature of their work. Pina’s was surprising, traumatic, emotionally wrenching. Merce’s was, if not exactly expected, and just as sad, then logical—a final step into a dark pool after a long, slow wade.
Merce created a large body of work, a giant living organism that expanded and sometimes morphed into varying iterations, depending on place and time, as with the series of Events. His use of chance operations is well documented and became a kind of sideshow at high-profile performances such as Split Sides at BAM in 2003, with live music by Radiohead and Sigur Ros, in which Cunningham rolled dice in an onstage ritual to determine the musical order. read more
The great German choreographer Pina Bausch passed away on June 29 within a brutally short week of a cancer diagnosis, at 68 years of age. It was a terrible shock to the world of dance and performance—the end of an era and the sudden, cold beginning of another without her.
Her pieces, performed by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, a company of characters more intriguing than Dickens’, were life magnified—passionate, dirty, beautiful, violent, and crazy. A lot of their actions seemed more like rituals of torture than dance. But it was definitely theater, set to expansive musical collages, in various Peter Pabst arrangements of dirt and water, among a fallen wall of concrete blocks which we witnessed crashing down, a field of carnations, a human-scaled terrarium. read more
Christopher Williams’ latest project that closed last weekend at DTW, entitled The Golden Legend, flies in the face of just about everything conjured up by the phrase “New York contemporary dance.” This cycle of male saints, following Williams’ memorable project for female saints a few years back, comprises solos performed by well-known dancers, plus supporting characters. It is dense with history and religious iconography, and epic in scale, with 17 solos. It has live music performed by a chamber ensemble and members of vocalists playing and singing early music plus new songs by Gregory Spears and Peter Kirn.
More high mass in feel than dance performance, the setting is defined immediately by 20 or so tall-backed chairs lining the sides of the stage. A processional down the aisle steps lets us view close up the amazing handiwork and detail of the costumes, created by Williams and team. But the seriousness of a mass is immediately deflated (or inflated?) by the cheeky first solo by David Parker as St. Thomas, diva-like and bathed in rose light (by Joe Levasseur). read more
I remember a favorite old college T-shirt, yellow with blue lettering, proudly proclaiming “a century of women on top” (this from a women’s college), which finally got so shredded from overuse that I had to throw it out. Back when I first got that shirt, which is a long time ago now, I think I would have been shocked to consider how little headway women have made at the very top echelons of the arts. I got thinking about this after a spate of articles on the topic appeared in major newspapers last week in L.A., Washington, D.C., and London. The theme of all these articles was how few women are employed as top-level theater directors, choreographers receiving big commissions, and music directors of major orchestras.
Ironically, these articles—which appeared in The Guardian (choreographers) and The Los Angeles Times (music directors) and The Washington Post (theater directors)—appeared the same week that the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice aired on SundayArts. read more
Choreographer Joe Goode, based in San Francisco, has been making work for his company for 23 years, and visits New York once in a blue moon. The two pieces at the Joyce (through this past weekend) showed Goode’s ability to forge narrative, camp, identity issues, humor, and oh yeah, dance, into an appealing theatrical style all his own.
The program included the New York premiere of Wonderboy, featuring a boy puppet by Basil Twist. read more
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